Jekyll2018-05-29T18:22:40+00:00https://trademindx.com/blog/Trademindx - Artificial Intelligence for Cryptocurrency TradingArtificial intelligence to analyze cryptocurrency market sentiment and help maximize your returns.Why We Decided Not To Run an ICO2018-04-06T16:03:56+00:002018-04-06T16:03:56+00:00https://trademindx.com/blog/2018/04/06/why-we-decided-not-to-run-an-ico<h2 id="decisions-decisions">Decisions, Decisions…</h2>
<p><img src="https://trademindx.com/blog/assets/why-we-decided-not-to-run-an-ico.jpg" alt="Why We Decided Not To Run an ICO" /></p>
<p>We have decided to cancel the scheduled token sale. The decision was not an easy one for us to make, but after careful consideration, we felt it was the right one. We understand some of you maybe disappointed, but hopefully after reading this article you will appreciate the rationale behind our decision and see that it is not all bad news! Read on!</p>
<p>There are are number of key drivers which lead us to this decision. Firstly, the legal and regulatory landscape is looking <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/governments-reacting-icos/">very uncertain</a> for ICOs at this time. We felt that running an ICO would expose us to potential risks which would deviate our focus from our core pillars - technology and innovation. Alot of ICOs have been in the media for all the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2018/02/17/telegram-ico-scam-among-cryptocurrency-scams/#4e2120f71cf0">wrong reasons</a> recently, exerting additional pressure on the cryptocurrency community and increasing volatility.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the number of ICOs failing has also very <a href="https://news.bitcoin.com/46-last-years-icos-failed-already/">very high</a>. And last but not least, we simply lacked the marketing muscle to get our project noticed. We are purely self-funded at this early stage, which means we got enough cash in the bank to keep working on the product but we don’t have a spare <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/thought-leadership/much-money-need-launch-ico/">$250,000 to throw</a> at a marketing campaign. So we have been trying to grow organically over the last few months but unfortunately we didn’t hit critical mass on our mailing list and socials to proceed with the token sale at this time.</p>
<h2 id="whats-next">What’s Next?</h2>
<p>The Trademindx artificial intelligence crypto project continues! We have been busy moving from prototype to MVP (Minimum Viable Product), breaking up the code into logical micro-services that can scale when they are run in the cloud environment. We have backloaded all news and market data that we need. Yea… we went way back to 2013 when Bitcoin first started to appear on newly formed exchanges! Ah the nostalgia!</p>
<p>We have also been testing alternative artificial intelligence models and comparing them to our default MaxEnt implementation. Further details on the technical work will be published later, so stay tuned.</p>
<p>Overall, the artificial intelligence platform is starting to really take shape and we look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks.</p>
<h2 id="but-what-about-the-token">But What About the Token?</h2>
<p>It’s not all doom and gloom! We still have a number of options open for the token. We could always run a token sale at a later date, we could just airdrop tokens to our loyal supporters and bootstrap the economy that way or we could simply scrap the token altogether. On balance, the most likely outcome will be that we will airdrop tokens without a crowd sale, but that will largely depend on how our community grows organically in the coming months.</p>
<p>Rest assured, we are continuing on with the Trademindx project and will release further details as they become available.</p>
<p>We will be updating the site to reflect these changes next week.</p>
<p>If you have any questions, then hit us up on <a href="https://twitter.com/trademindx">Twitter</a>.</p>AlexDecisions, Decisions…Can Artificial Intelligence Predict the Cryptocurrency Market?2018-03-27T16:01:33+00:002018-03-27T16:01:33+00:00https://trademindx.com/blog/2018/03/27/can-artificial-intelligence-predict-the-cryptocurrency-market<p><img src="https://trademindx.com/blog/assets/can-artificial-intelligence-predict-cryptocurrency-market.jpg" alt="Can Artificial Intelligence Predict Cryptocurrency Market Moves?" /></p>
<h2 id="opinion-moves-the-market">Opinion moves the market.</h2>
<h2 id="can-artificial-intelligence-sense-opinion">Can Artificial Intelligence sense opinion?</h2>
<h2 id="and-can-ai-predict-the-market-before-it-moves">And, can AI predict the market before it moves?</h2>
<p>The latter two are the fundamental questions we are trying to answer with the <a href="https://trademindx.com">Trademindx project</a>!</p>
<p>Let’s discuss each of these points in a bit more detail.</p>
<h2 id="opinion">Opinion</h2>
<p>What impacts the price of precious metals, currencies, cryptocurrencies, stocks? Some may think it’s the money invested, but this is not the case. It is driven by opinion! To be more precise, it is opinion and consensus.</p>
<p>There’s an excellent post on <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7vga1y/i_will_tell_you_exactly_what_is_going_on_here/">Reddit</a> which goes into more depth on opinion in the crypto space with almost 20K up-votes and its a punchy write up that is well worth a read!</p>
<p>Since it is generally accepted, let’s just take it is as a baseline assumption for the purposes of discussion: opinion moves the market.</p>
<p>Now, here’s a crazy thought, imagine you could take the whole set of traders participating in particular market. They are all making independent decisions, making up their minds on buy/sell prices, placing orders and executing trades.</p>
<p>What if you could model that set of traders and deduce their overall consensus on opinion? What do you get? A super trader! That trader can clearly predict the market movements correctly. Now it’s just a case of building such a trader with AI technology.</p>
<p>There’s an obvious problem, not all traders are actively commenting on social media or forums and we cannot (unfortunately, yet) plug-in to their brains!</p>
<p>However, we can assume that we are taking a slice of the market and most traders are consuming some sort of information when making trading decisions. We then have to model how that information is being analyzed by the traders and we are golden.</p>
<h2 id="sensing-opinion-with-artificial-intelligence">Sensing Opinion With Artificial Intelligence</h2>
<p>We have established that opinion moves the market. The next logical question is to discuss whether AI can be used to measure opinion to a statistical degree of confidence.</p>
<p>In order to attempt to measure opinion, we need to source raw information from a number of sources, apply Natural Language Processing (NLP) to make sense of it, turning it into data that can be processed by a machine. Then, we apply sentiment analysis plus machine learning algorithms to derive trading signals.</p>
<p>So what are the sources we can go to in order to establish opinion?</p>
<ul>
<li>News articles</li>
<li>Twitter feeds</li>
<li>Reddit posts</li>
<li>Other social media feeds</li>
<li>Forum threads</li>
<li>Even GitHub repository activity</li>
<li>And of course, market data feeds from cryptocurrency exchanges</li>
</ul>
<p>Once we get the data, we run it through a sentiment analyzer which allocates a sentiment measure that looks something like this:</p>
<figure class="highlight"><pre><code class="language-ruby" data-lang="ruby"><span class="no">SentimentConfidence</span> <span class="p">{</span>
<span class="nb">id</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="err">’</span><span class="mi">5</span><span class="n">a53bc72ca3ec40fb2bd9bbd</span><span class="err">’</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">ticker</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="err">’</span><span class="no">ETH</span><span class="err">’</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">positiveSentiment</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mf">57.0</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">negativeSentiment</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mf">23.0</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">neutralSentiment</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mf">20.0</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">compoundSentiment</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mf">100.0</span><span class="p">,</span>
<span class="n">numberOfSamples</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="mi">781</span>
<span class="p">}];</span></code></pre></figure>
<p>In the case above, Trademindx has deduced that at that specific moment in time, after analyzing 781 samples of discreet data, Ethereum has an overall positive sentiment — with a 57% degree of confidence! We then repeat this for all other cryptocurrencies that we want to analyze. Not only that, we can track sentiment as it changes in real-time! Cool huh?</p>
<p>Research has shown that sentiment analysis algorithms are approaching high degrees of accuracy. Our sentiment analyzer is based on VADER — Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner, which has been shown to produce highly accurate results, even in social media contexts.</p>
<p>Our AI can sense opinion!</p>
<p>Market data sources providing volumes and price ticks are still relatively open in the cryptocurrency space with exchanges freely publishing near real-time or even real-time feeds, which is in direct contrast to mature forex and stock markets. So our market data sources are abundant.</p>
<blockquote>“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity” — Sun Tzu</blockquote>
<p>Furthermore, what makes the cryptocurrency market such an interesting domain to analyze, is the relative immaturity which leads to high volatility.</p>
<p>Market moves are often triggered by announcements, news articles, support by social influencers and even rumours! This often happens very quickly, so if an AI algorithm could sense changing opinion, then this could in turn provide a trading advantage. And of course, a trading advantage has intrinsic monetary value — profit.</p>
<h2 id="predicting-cryptocurrency-market-moves">Predicting Cryptocurrency Market Moves</h2>
<p>So, we can get an idea of the overall opinion for a cryptocurrency with a degree of confidence but how do we then use that to predict market moves?</p>
<p>Well that’s where it gets a bit complicated.</p>
<p>As well as taking sentiment data, we also take our input data and attempt to build AI models and then refine those models using feedback. This is where machine learning comes in. We back test our models against known market moves and then continuously re-calibrate those models, thereby attempting to improve accuracy. The model starts off vague but gets more refined as time moves on and more data becomes known.</p>
<p>If that sounds confusing, lets go over a more concrete example. So say our current model for Ether, predicts that based on certain characteristics found in our data, we expect the price of Ether to rise within the next 24 hours. We make note of that, wait 24 hours and check if that was the case or not. We then use this information to refine the model. This is what we mean by feedback .This “predict and test” happens all the time — continuously.</p>
<p>At any given time, we take the most up-to-date model, combine it with our sentiment data and use it to form a trading signal — BUY, SELL or HOLD (FOMO, FUD or HODL if you like that sort of thing!).</p>
<p>And we don’t just consider 24 hours as a back testing timeframe but many different timeframes to test.</p>
<p>For our models, we have decided to use Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) modelling which has been shown to produce more accurate results than Naive Bayes. However, in the future models can be swapped out if others are deemed to be more accurate.</p>
<blockquote>entropy noun — lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder</blockquote>
<p>Here is an extract from our whitepaper:</p>
<p>MaxEnt works by extracting a set of weighted features from the input. Each feature corresponds to a constraint on the model. The MaxEnt model is the model with the maximum entropy of all the models that satisfy the constraints. The baseline principle being that if we choose a model with less entropy we would add information constraints to the model that would not be justified by the evidence available to us. Choosing a MaxEnt model is motivated by the desire to preserve as much uncertainty as possible thus removing any bias. More formally, the maximum entropy principle states that:</p>
<p>“…in making inferences on the basis of partial information we must use that probability distribution which has the maximum entropy subject to whatever is known.”
Additionally, the reasons for using MaxEnt are as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Near state-of-the-art level of accuracy when classifying complex data sets</li>
<li>Simple features have been proven to successfully approximate complex relationships</li>
<li>MaxEnt is able to output the accuracy/confidence of the classification</li>
<li>Of course the inner workings of Trademindx are a bit more complex than that and are still being actively developed but that’s the high level overview!</li>
</ul>
<p>We envisage day traders and investors using the Trademindx platform, can gain insights into the social sentiment currently in the market before they execute their trades. This may help with decision making and provide increased returns while lowering risk.</p>
<p>Once AI can be built to predict market moves, the possibilities are then torn wide open for algorithmic trading in the cryptocurrency markets by hooking our AI into existing exchange APIs and running different trading strategies based on the trading signals!</p>
<p>Perhaps our AI can even be hooked into more traditional forex and stock markets too. The principles are similar, its just that the cryptomarket is so much more fun right now.</p>
<h2 id="so-can-ai-predict-cryptocurrency-market-moves">So can AI predict cryptocurrency market moves?</h2>
<p>In this article, we have given a high-level overview of our approach and are open to discussion. We believe it can be done, with sentiment analysis nearing state-of-the-art and the availability of relatively cheap compute in cloud-based environments, the ingredients are there to make this a reality.</p>
<p>What do you think? Please share your thoughts, feedback or questions in the comments below!</p>
<p>If you would like to find out more about the Trademindx project, then <a href="https://trademindx.com">head over to our homepage</a>.</p>AlexTrademindx Roadmap Q1 2018 Update2018-02-17T16:15:45+00:002018-02-17T16:15:45+00:00https://trademindx.com/blog/2018/02/17/trademindx-roadmap-q1-2018-update<p><img src="https://trademindx.com/blog/assets/trademindx-roadmap-part1.png" alt="Trademindx Roadmap Q1 2018 Update" /></p>
<h2 id="trademindx-roadmap-q1-2018-update">Trademindx Roadmap Q1 2018 Update</h2>
<p>The Trademindx roadmap has been published, it’s an ambitious project and we are excited to be working through it with good momentum. In this article, we take a deeper dive into the first 3 milestones (of phase 1), provide updates on our progress and expand on some of the high-level details!</p>
<h2 id="q4--2017-project-launch">Q4 / 2017 Project Launch</h2>
<p>The Trademindx project was started at the end of 2017 with Alex coming up with the initial concept. We created our website and published our whitepaper. We gathered feedback from our network, the community and made improvements. We also kicked off the technical design, broke the project down into smaller deliverable modules and started building out the first prototype. The Trademindx artificial intelligence project was launched!</p>
<h2 id="q1--2018-prototype-development">Q1 / 2018 Prototype Development</h2>
<p>The focus during the start of 2018 has been to complete the first working prototype — which we have now successfully done! It was an incredible moment when Trademindx artificial intelligence came to life, it backloaded all historical market data points for all cryptocurrencies with a market cap of more than $100m, started sourcing news feeds, streaming Twitter feeds, getting real-time market data ticks, calibrating it’s internal AI models, applying natural-language processing algorithms and… then it actually started making crypto market movement predictions!</p>
<p>Trademindx started refining those models as more data became known to it and providing degrees of confidence in its own predictions! It is currently running, learning, predicting, checking its predictions and refining its internal models. As it learns, we expect its signals to become more accurate, turning huge amounts of data into simple BUY, SELL or HOLD trading indicators with clear confidence levels! Helping to empower the crypto investor!</p>
<p>The cryptocurrency market has also been very volatile during the start of 2018, as long-term investors started to cash out on the big December bull-run which saw Bitcoin soar to record new levels. New investors were also perhaps shaken by the moves of central governments and regulators, further feeding the market slump. “FUD” set it. Now the market is picking up again, investors are coming in with more confidence and this has meant that Trademindx has been able to learn through a market down-turn which has further strengthened its knowledge base and models!</p>
<p>During this time, we have also been focusing on refining the technical architecture design, speaking to technical experts, getting feedback and ensuring it will stack up as a platform. We also published a detailed FAQ on our homepage, based on the questions we have been receiving. We spent some time refining the website to ensure that all the information is clear, well defined and transparent.</p>
<p>We have also been busy building out the token and crowd sale smart contracts in Solidity and testing them out using the Truffle test Ethereum blockchain client. We have been writing lot of tests to check different scenarios and ensure the contracts work as expected. One of the challenges with smart contracts is that they are unlike other software in the sense that once they are published to the live Ethereum network, they cannot be changed! So the code needs to be 100% accurate with no bugs. We have been utilising the Zeppelin open-source codebase, leveraging community knowledge in this area and building on-top of proven and thoroughly tested code.</p>
<p>We also put together our terms and conditions for the token sale.</p>
<p>We expanded our team, introducing key new members around finance, technology and community building. We have also been refining the business model for Trademindx, projecting revenues, calculating cashflows, determining how much funding we need to bootstrap the project and working out token sale allocations. This work has now been successfully completed and we are now almost ready to start the token pre-sale!</p>
<p>There will be healthy bonuses up for grabs in our pre-sale packages, so make sure to register for the pre-sale today!</p>
<h2 id="q2--2018-token-sale">Q2 / 2018 Token Sale</h2>
<p>As we look to the start of Q2, focus will shift to raising the required funding to build a proper engineering team and setup the infrastructure to run the Trademindx platform in the cloud.</p>
<p>We aim to push out the token and crowd sale smart contracts to the live Ethereum blockchain too. We then expect to conclude the pre-sale, payout token bonuses and move into the public sale as soon as possible. Once the public sale completes, we will run airdrops and start to file for exchange listings!</p>
<p>During Q2 we will also be moving the technical aspects of the Trademindx platform forward and building it out. We hope you enjoyed this update and will join us on our journey.</p>
<p>Please take a moment to <a href="https://twitter.com/trademindx">connect with us on Twitter</a>. Trademindx is going to start Tweeting soon too!</p>
<p>To your investing success,
Trademindx Team</p>
<h2 id="about-trademindx">About Trademindx</h2>
<p>Trademindx artificial intelligence crunches huge amounts of data and attempts tells you which cryptocurrencies to invest in for maximum returns.</p>
<p>You will need utility tokens to gain access to Trademindx platform.</p>AlexHow to Buy Tokens2018-02-15T16:23:01+00:002018-02-15T16:23:01+00:00https://trademindx.com/blog/2018/02/15/how-to-buy-tokens<h2 id="how-to-buy-tokens">How to Buy Tokens</h2>
<p>If you want to buy tokens and gain access to the Trademindx artificial intelligence platform once it is up-and-running, you have come to the right place.</p>
<p>This is the official guide! So let’s get started!</p>
<p>Note: this guide is also useful if you have never purchased any ERC20 Ethereum based tokens such as BAT, POE, TRX or REQ to name a few.</p>
<h2 id="get-an-ethereum-wallet">Get an Ethereum Wallet</h2>
<p>The first thing you will need is an Ethereum wallet, that is pre-funded with the amount of Ether (ETH) you want to exchange.</p>
<p>Your wallet must be compatible with ERC20 tokens, such as MyEtherWallet. If you do not have a MyEtherWallet or other token compatible wallet, then head over to <a href="https://www.myetherwallet.com/">MyEtherWallet</a> and set one up!</p>
<p>Exchange based wallets are usually not compatible with tokens and should not be used. Moreover they are not a safe place to store your Ether (or other coins/tokens) — see side note below!</p>
<p>For a list of wallets that are compatible, please consult this <a href="https://tokenmarket.net/what-is/how-to-participate-ethereum-token-crowdsale/">guide</a>.</p>
<h2 id="pre-fund-your-ethereum-wallet">Pre-fund Your Ethereum Wallet</h2>
<p>Next you will need some Ether in your wallet, so you can exchange it for tokens! For this, you will need to buy some Ether.</p>
<p>You can use a service such as Coinbase for this. Register for an account with <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/">Coinbase</a> and then purchase some Ether. This will place the Ether in your Coinbase wallet.</p>
<p>For a guide on how to buy Ether through Coinbase, please <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/buy-ethereum">read this guide</a>. Once you have purchased some Ether, send it from Coinbase to your MyEtherWallet wallet.</p>
<p>Great, you are almost good to go!</p>
<p>Side note: In general, it is advisable not to hold Ether (or any other tokens) in wallets provided by Coinbase or exchanges as they are more likely to get hacked. Always store your Ether in a wallet such as MyEtherWallet or even invest in an offline hardware wallet like the Ledger. Your wallet will usually come with 2 keys, a public key and a private key. Your public key, is well… public, it is also referred to as your public address, so it is safe to share. Never share your private key with anyone!</p>
<h2 id="get-familiar-with-trademindx">Get Familiar With Trademindx!</h2>
<p>Make sure to visit the <a href="https://trademindx.com/register.html">Trademindx homepage</a> and read the whitepaper, roadmap and FAQ to ensure that acquiring tokens is the right move for you.</p>
<p>Also, do not hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have!</p>
<h2 id="register-for-token-sale">Register For Token Sale</h2>
<p>Visit our <a href="https://trademindx.com/register.html">registration page</a> and register for the token sale! We will then send you a notification once the token sale starts!</p>
<p>We will start with the pre-sale, followed by the public sale. There are healthy bonuses for joining during the pre-sale phase, as well as Trademindx beta access!</p>
<h2 id="tltr">TL;TR</h2>
<ul>
<li>Register with <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/">Coinbase</a> or similar service, buy Ether</li>
<li>Register with <a href="https://www.myetherwallet.com/">MyEtherWallet</a> or similar wallet that supports ERC20 tokens</li>
<li>Transfer your Ether from Coinbase to your MyEtherWallet</li>
<li><a href="https://trademindx.com/register.html">Register for Token pre-sale</a></li>
<li>We will send you a notification when the token pre-sale starts and you can use your Ether to buy tokens</li>
<li>We will then send tokens straight to your MyEtherWallet wallet</li>
<li>We hope you found this guide useful! Any questions please let us know!</li>
</ul>
<p>To your investing success,
Trademindx Team</p>SaeedHow to Buy TokensTrademindx: Artificial Intelligence for Cryptocurrency Trading2018-01-16T16:05:00+00:002018-01-16T16:05:00+00:00https://trademindx.com/blog/2018/01/16/trademindx-artificial-intelligence-for-cryptocurrency-trading<h2 id="get-the-edge-in-cryptocurrency-trading">Get the edge in cryptocurrency trading!</h2>
<p>In this quick blog post, we introduce Trademindx - an artificial intelligence for cryptocurrency trading.</p>
<p>Trademindx aims to facilitate daily trading decisions through applied natural-language processing, sentiment analysis and machine learning algorithms.</p>
<p>Built as a micro-services based distributed architecture, its primarily function is to analyse large volumes of data and provide clear trading indicators to the client in real-time.</p>
<p>Simply put, Trademindx crunches huge amounts of data and tells you which cryptocurrencies to invest in and attempts to maximize your returns. It is an Artificial Intelligence specifically built to analyse the cryptocurrency market.</p>
<p>The system combines natural-language processing, sentiment analysis and machine learning algorithms to classify large volumes of data into clear (buy, sell or hold) trading signals in real-time.</p>
<p>The default approach is implemented using a maximum entropy algorithm with feedback, which applies a multinomial logistic regression model to categorise data and continually improve accuracy.</p>
<p>It is currently being developed specifically for cryptocurrency applications starting with Bitcoin (BTC) and all other altcoins with a large market capitalisation (more that $100mm).</p>
<p><a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/mi5aj49b3thqd5z/trademindx_whitepaper.pdf">Read our whitepaper</a> to find out more!</p>AlexGet the edge in cryptocurrency trading!